Most experts, including doctors, lawyers, and financial advisors, often misunderstand statistics, leaving the public misinformed. Gerd Gigerenzer wrote a book called “Risk Savvy” detailing this problem. I made a post about it here.
The COVID-19 tracking project post daily data about test, cases, hospitalization and deaths.
There is a huge problem with these charts. They provide no context whatsoever.
Chris Martenson gives a very good explanation about the PCR test and the cycle threshold (CT) for all of these positive COVID test.
Dr. Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, gives a simple explanation.
The COVID-19 tracking project post these charts, but no discussion is given to what the cycle threshold (CT) is for all of these cases. What does a COVID-19 death mean? What does a COVID-19 hospitalization mean? If I break my leg and show up the hospital, they will give me a COVID-19 test. If I test positive, does this count as a COVID-19 hospitalization? I have seen stories indicating this is what they are doing. Same things goes for deaths from COVID-19.
The NY times ran article discussing this problem of the CT being to high.
Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California, Riverside. “I’m shocked that people would think that 40 could represent a positive,” she said.
A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. Those changes would mean the amount of genetic material in a patient’s sample would have to be 100-fold to 1,000-fold that of the current standard for the test to return a positive result — at least, one worth acting on.
Each flu season the CDC issues the number of illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths from the flu. Below is the data for the 2019-2020 US flu season.
The difference between 24K deaths and 62K deaths is massive. Even as a matter of historical record, it is hard to nail down how many people died last year from the flu. This is very tricky especially for the elderly. People above 70 years old have many health complications at time of death. It is difficult to point to one specific illness in each case.
State and local governments are using this data to justify ruining peoples lives for a virus where 80% of the deaths are for people above the age of 65.
